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Monday, June 4, 2018

A Thoroughly Inadequate Silent Legions Update

It has been a busy time here down in the Flumphwerks, what
with my son graduating high school, the release of Crepuscular #1, and working
on a comic with Leighton “Cowboy” Connor.That’s to say nothing of various other art assignments, trying to follow
up the ‘zine, and trying to prepare for Gencon in (*checks calendar, shudders*)
sweet Christ, only eight weeks.

So the long and short of it I’ve fallen behind on the blog,
specifically my Silent Legions session reports. We’ve only played two sessions
since the last report (I told you it’s been busy), and this recap is going to
be woefully inadequate, but I want to try and hit the high points and go over
the most interesting things happening.

Broadly, the players are really enjoying the game. They’ve
enjoyed the death and madness, leaning into it like the roller coaster ride it
should be. My son, especially, has been enjoying it, which is good because he’s
the one that suggested a Lovecraftian horror game in the first place. The
Factions/Cult part of the game has really helped keep interesting things going
on in the sandbox, and I’ve yet to be at a loss for interesting things to throw
at the PCs. The heroes are also finally starting to get a good handle on the
main factions in and around Seattle, and they’re starting to make alliances and
pick sides.

Current Investigators

Bernadette “Bunny”
Kennedy: Tough/Bodyguard

Abigail Spencer:
Tough/Reporter

Glen Gabriel
Gerhardt: Scholar/Programmer

Abraham Goldstein:
Socialite/Police Officer

Vinnie Morg:
Investigator/Business Owner(DECEASED)

So here’s
the interesting things that have happened…

Vinnie is approached by the Garibaldi Syndicate, the new crime family taking over Seattle. Word
of the PCs expertise in the occult has reached Zeno Garibaldi (head of the syndicate) and he wants the PCs to do a
favor for him. As a show of good faith, Mr. Garibaldi has “taken care of”
Vinnie’s problems in Atlanta.

N-PACT (North
Pacific Association for Creative Technology) is hosting a party at the Space
Needle. At this party, Veronica Vespers
(a trendy modern artist) is to reveal the plans for her new large-scale installation
sculpture project. Vespers will have a tablet computer with her, Garibaldi
wants that tablet (or at least the data on it).

Vinnie eagerly agrees to the request, and the rest of the
players are all too happy to make friends with the Mob.

Meanwhile, Bunny, Abby, and Glen make their way to Yakima,
following the cannibal gunmen from the last session. In Yakima they players
totally fail to interact with any of the interesting PCs. Thus is the way of
player-driven sandboxes.

But here’s what they find out about Yakima anyway…

There is definitely some kind of large cannibal cult on the
outskirts of Yakima. The cult has some connection to the Top Hat Diner.

The cannibal cult conforms to almost every sleazy redneck horror movie cult
trope there is. (I decided to make it easy for the players)

The cult lives in a run-down trailer park on Old Sluaghterhouse
Road, across the street from the old cholera cemetery and the abandoned Ajax
Slaughterhouse.

There’s a large black pole-barn in the center of the trailer
park, heavily padlocked and covered in occult graffiti.

All the trailer park residents look surprisingly well-fed.

Why yes, there has been an upswing in missing persons
reports in Yakima lately.

The biggest trailer has a super expensive custom Humvee
parked in from of it.

They’re having a barbecue that night, and the investigators
are invited.

The trailer park is owned by a man named Augustus Blott, who
also owns a plot of rural land where a militia has built a compound. He also
owns the old abandoned insane asylum in Hot Springs.

The Darkness the Hungers

The investigators decided none of this was currently their
problem and decided to make their way back to Seattle. (They do plan on coming
back at some point, hopefully with help from their new Mafia buddies.)

So by not investigating, the cannibal cult (Blood Message of the Shadowed Fellowship)
was able to continue with their plans unimpeded. The world doesn’t pause for
the PCs! That night, after the “barbecue” the cult opened the vault in the
floor of the pole barn and called upon their ghoul allies (“the old fellers”).
The ghouls performed an augury on the guts of a sacrifice and determined that
the Rheinholdt Manuscript (stolen by Chase
the rival cultist way back when) is in a Pawnshop in Seattle. The cult sends a
retrieval team to PC’s neighborhood!

A few days pass in Seattle, and the PCs spend time getting
ready for the party at the Space Needle (it’s super fancy). We are also joined
by a new player and his PC, semi-retired police officer Abraham Goldstein.

The cannibal cultists enter Vinnies’ Pawnshop, dressed in
their Sunday best. Bunny recognizes one of the gunmen from the fracas at the
apartment complex. They inquire about rare books, especially those dealing with
“esoteric” subjects. They don’t seem to believe Vinnie when he tells them he
has nothing like what they’re looking for, but they leave anyway.

The PCs hide the Rheinholdt
Manuscript in Glen’s apartment. Glen’s player isn’t here this week, and my
players know I won’t kill and absent player’s character off-screen. I can’t
argue with this lite meta-gaming, and it moves the story along anyway.

The PCs arrive at the Space Needle and it’s a big fancy
party with a lot of rich and beautiful people. Danielle Blake. She is
Pakistani-British, very agitated, and if not yet insane, then close to it. They
find out she is another occult investigator, on the trail of The Rite of Gray Truth and has made
connections with them and Lasalle Industries.

On their way in, they run into a
woman named

Lasalle Industries is a major corporation in Seattle. Marcus Lasalle is a member of N-Pact
and Veronica Vesper’s patron. The PCs and Danielle decide to work together.

At the party, the PCs meet and talk to a variety of
interesting character. I will make a separate post later about the
mix-and-mingle charts I came up with. (Edit: It's right HERE.)

The most fun NPC to play was Thomas J. Bundy of Thomas J. Bundy Motors!, the owner of the
biggest car dealership in Seattle (“Why don’t you come down to the dealership
on Monday! We’ll set you up with something nice and big!”) . Turns out he’s the
guy that sold Augustus Blott his Humvee. The PCs make note to visit Bundy
later.

Veronica Vesper’s tablet kept moving around. I had a random
table for “Where is the Tablet now?” At one point it was in the briefcase of Luke Patton, Lasalle’s intimidating
personal bodyguard.

Vinny overhears Lasalle and Patton talking about some kind
of shoot-out between the Garibaldi Syndicate and Lasalle’s “Thaumic Assets
Division.” It’s all very sinister.

Eventually Vesper gives her presentation and the tablet is
in her possession. Abraham fakes a heart attack, and Bunny lifts the tablet in
the confusion.

The presentation reveals Vesper’s new art project. It’s a
series of five motion sculptures of various sizes. They resemble Mobius loops
made of mirrored tiles with three spires weaving in and out of the loop. The
whole thing causes a weird euphoria to look at (1 Madness).

(The PCs haven’t figured this out yet, but they will when
they have a chance to examine the data. The sculptures are components of a
large-scale summoning ritual that will free Dahg-Othyg-Zoag from his prison in the center of a super-massive
black hole and bring the alien god to Earth.)

That’s when the power
goes out!

The cannibal cult attacks the Space Needle! While the PCs were
out, the cult broke into Vinny’s home, found his hairbrush and used his hair to
track him here!

The cult strike team consists of four mundane gunmen, a petty sorceress, and the half-ghoul cursed warrior with a black katana. Chaos
and panic ensues. Great winged beasts crash through the windows, looking for Vinny!

It’s cult-on-cult violence! Lasalle uses the Despicable Worm
to create Some Hideous Thing of Raw Muscle and Ropey Tendons. His bodyguard Patton pulls on a
mirrored mask, revealing him to be the lead gunman at the hotel shoot-out from
two sessions ago.

Bunny, Abraham, and Abby let the rival cults clear the stairwells
of each other. Bunny has the tablet, it’s time to get out of there.

Danielle Blake blasts one of the monsters with some weird alien cancer gun. She is then lost in
the fracas. (She will pop up again, to be sure.)

Vinnie, poor brave Vinnie, he was in a separate room from
his friends when the fighting started. The half-ghoul and the sorceress are
gunning for him specifically because he knows where the Rheinholdt Manuscript is. He takes cover behind the bar and starts
making and throwing Molotov cocktails (because it’s not a real game until the
Molotov cocktails come out). The fire succeeds in driving the half-ghoul away
and kills the sorceress. Sadly the fire gets out of control (Vinnie had
previously spilled booze all over the bar so the whole thing would light up). Vinnie’s
player makes a couple of bad rolls, and we lose our second to fatal flames.

"Thanks for visiting!"

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Who I Am

I am a long-time gamer who enjoys both new-style story games and old-style OSR stuff. I love drawing maps and goofy monsters. I help write, layout, and illustrate games for Hex Games, and I keep taking stabs at creating webcomics with mixed results. I talk about RPGs (and other things) at my Bernie the Flumph blog.